Early on September 6, New Jersey Democratic senator Cory Booker released 12 pages of “committee confidential” documents. Due to their confidential status, the documents were not to be discussed in public by the Democrats questioning Kavanaugh during the week. Booker did so after a feisty exchange with Republican senator John Cornyn, during which Sen. Booker shook his head, leaned back in his chair and said, “Bring it,” after Sen. Cornyn told him if he released the emails, it would be equivalent to releasing classified information, a punishable offense that could lead to Booker’s expulsion from the Senate.

Sen. Booker released the documents after “an unknown person,” according to The New York Times, leaked a number of separate documents to them, including an opinion piece that Kavanaugh was weighing in on regarding Roe v. Wade, the reproductive-rights case that has been a central conflict in Kavanaugh’s confirmation process.

According to the Times, Kavanaugh suggested deleting a line in the piece that read, “It is widely accepted by legal scholars across the board that Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land” because, he added, “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.”

Kavanaugh is downplaying the news, CNN reported, quoting him as saying this morning, “The broader point was simply that I think it was overstating something about legal scholars, and I’m always concerned with accuracy and I thought that was not quite an accurate description of all legal scholars because it referred to all.”

Also this morning, after being questioned about it, Kavanaugh stated that Roe V. Wade is “an important precedent.”

Other released emails discuss racial profiling, a topic Senator Booker referenced in the hearing on Wednesday night.

In an email released by Booker, Judge Kavanaugh said he “‘generally’ favored race-neutral security measures, but thought there was an ‘interim question’ of whether the government should use racial profiling before a supposedly race-neutral system could be developed sometime in the future,” which Senator Booker's website recounted in a Thursday statement.

Since then, Democrats have been frustrated by the confirmation process, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who tweeted on Monday, “Republicans know this has been the least transparent SCOTUS process in history and the hearings should be delayed until we can fully review Judge Kavanaugh’s records.” A lack of transparency has been a central issue in the Kavanaugh hearings, as an MSNBC op-ed lays out.

As the chaos continues to unfold, the latest development is just a small part of the spectacle surrounding the Supreme Court nomination, this week including interruptions by protesters and attendees dressed as characters from The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s still early, though, as another Democrat, Hawaiian senator Mazie Hirono, today released yet another “committee confidential” email about government programs aimed at native Hawaiians.